Articles by Herschel Smith

Hmm …

I wonder if sticky fired casings is one challenge with making a 500 S&W lever action rifle? I don’t care. I still want one, Smith & Wesson.

Dean Weingarten.

Vitaly Aleksandrovich Nikolayenko was a prominent Russian brown bear researcher (Asian version of the American brown or grizzly bear) who routinely and closely approached bears without a firearm. He did this for 33 years, from 1970 to December 2003. In December 2003, he followed a bear that had come out of hibernation in the winter until the bear attacked him, killed him, and ate him. His use of bear spray had failed to stop the bear.  His was the first recorded fatal failure of bear spray. The killing was the culmination of several lucky escapes over the years of his association with brown bears.

It won’t be the last either. Dean also recounts the life and philosophy of Timothy Treadwell, a sorry excuse of an adventurer because he went into the bush with naivety.

At American Hunter.

While I profess to know a lot about firearms, I didn’t know there was a 10mm magnum round, which is different from the 10mm round. I would probably spring for this wheel gun, except for the price: $3,309.

That’s enough for a nice custom 1911, or two thirds of that will get you a Springfield Armory TRP full size 1911. To me, after looking at the tested results for the ammunition, I just don’t see that much to be gained over the .45 ACP+P, and in fact, I don’t see anything at all to be gained over the 450 SMC from Double Tap.

To each his own. If you like 10mm and are willing to spend the money, this may be a nice field option for dangerous game defense.

Fractional reserve banking also happens when a bank loans money to another bank, and that bank loans it out in smaller chunks, and so on, until a given amount of money is loaned out so many times that it can’t be covered if it defaults. More money has been loaned out than exists in the bank, or the collective banks who have loaned it. To be specific, 10% is cash reserve, or it used to be.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

James Wesley Rawles at Survival Blog has a very good discussion on fractional reserve banking and how it came to America. It’s worth you time to read it.

Judge: "Constitutionally protected resource like bears."

Me: Where in the constitution does it mention bears?

Alaska Judge Halts Bear Cull Program, Calls It Unconstitutional https://t.co/Mal83wDTDR

— CaptainsJournal (@BrutusMaximus50) April 3, 2025

David Codrea has a great find on a recent petition for writ of certiorari before the supreme court concerning D.C.’s limit on magazine capacity. Here is the document.

But by rewriting Heller’s “in common use” test to add a dangerousness element, lower courts have continued to interest balance under a different name. At bottom, lower courts have decided that criminal misuses of firearms (as in mass shootings) justify complete bans on certain arms. They then use questionable analogical reasoning to justify that result. Both Heller and Bruen already rejected that sort of “subjective dangerousness” reasoning, and the Court should do so again here. And while the majority below said that the plus-ten magazine ban was comparable to laws that addressed weapons capable of unprecedented lethality, it could only get there by limiting the Second Amendment solely to individual self-defense. Viewing the Second Amendment through the correct lens—that it protects the right to bear arms for community defense, too—the historical analogues the majority relied on below fail.

The decision here shows that analogies under Bruen are helpful only when courts have an underlying theory about how to identify the relevant similarity. Unfortunately, many courts still don’t grasp the underlying principles of the Second Amendment.

[ … ]

By adding a dangerousness test designed to override the “in common use” test, courts have adopted “the very sort of means-end scrutiny that Bruen explicitly forbids courts from applying in the Second Amendment context.” Bianchi, 111 F.4th at 479 (Gregory, J., concurring). Nothing has changed except that courts now “cloak[] interest balancing under the guise of ‘tradition.’” Duncan, 2025 WL 867583, at *47 (Bumatay, J., dissenting) (comparing Ninth Circuit’s analysis pre- and post-Bruen and noting “little” change). Worse, “even the regulations that failed in Heller or Bruen would survive” the lower courts’ dangerousness test. Id. at *52 (VanDyke, J., dissenting).

Even if analogies were necessary here, they weren’t used correctly. To analogize well, courts need to know the Second Amendment’s purpose. Heller confirmed that the Second Amendment “guarantee[s] the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.” 554 U.S. at 592. Although Heller clarified that the Second Amendment covers individual self-defense, it noted other lawful purposes for keeping and bearing arms, such as preserving the militia and hunting. Id. at 599. But after Heller and Bruen, courts have narrowed the Second Amendment to protect only keeping and bearing arms for individual self-defense against crime.

This petition is very well written. I wish it had been written for AR-15 bans and they had petitioned the court to hear Snope.

I commend this for your reading today. It smashes the “in common use” test as applied only to individuals. It specifically states what we all know and need to be addressed. The court either recognizes the role of militia or it doesn’t. If so, then good. If not, then they will have completely given up any legitimacy to caring what the words of the 2A say.

Britain is lost. Past tense. Without so much as firing a shot. It's over for them. Thankfully we fought a war and won to ensure we didn't answer to them. England could never have won against frontiersmen. They were doomed the second they set foot on American soil.

— CaptainsJournal (@BrutusMaximus50) March 30, 2025

Cowboy News Daily.

A North Carolina man took a creative and goofy approach to bear deterrence —stepping out of his house in a bear suit to spook away a black bear that had plunked down on his lawn.

It worked for Rodney Clark of Asheville, North Carolina, as evidenced by media interviews and a video making the rounds on news outlets and social media.

However, some Wyomingites said trying that tactic on a grizzly bear would probably get a person mauled, possibly killed — or perhaps even worse — molested by the bear.

[ … ]

In an interview with “Inside Edition,” he said that the bear costume has proven effective in pushing bears off his property.

He told “Inside Edition” that bears sometimes “stop and pause and look back. They’re not really sure what that is.”

What happened to a Marlin 45-70 lever action rifle? What was this man thinking?

This is an ill-advised strategy, regardless of what kind of bear.

New York Court Holds Stun Gun Ban Not Unconstitutional, in Contravention of Caetano.

Dean Weingarten has a good find at Ammoland.

Judge Eduardo Ramos, the U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York,  has issued an Opinion & Order that a ban on stun guns is constitutional. A New York State law prohibits the private possession of stun guns and tasers; a New York City law prohibits the possession and selling of stun guns. Judge Ramos has ruled these laws do not infringe on rights protected by the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Let’s briefly revisit statements made by Justice Roberts concerning the authority of the court.

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday warned about a rising number of threats to the judiciary’s independence, including calls for violence against judges and “dangerous” suggestions by elected officials to disregard court rulings they disagree with.

He didn’t just come out with this statement once, but felt obligated to reiterate his concerns in March of this year.

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” Roberts said in the statement.

Make no mistake. He’s saying the same thing regardless of how the caution is worded. This is remarkable since the NY court decision is clearly in contravention of the Caetano ruling. Let’s quote.

The Court has held that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding,” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 582, 128 S.Ct. 2783, 171 L.Ed.2d 637 (2008), and that this “Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the States,” McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 750, 130 S.Ct. 3020, 177 L.Ed.2d 894 (2010). In this case, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld a Massachusetts law prohibiting the possession of stun guns after examining “whether a stun gun is the type of weapon contemplated by Congress in 1789 as being protected by the Second Amendment.” 470 Mass. 774, 777, 26 N.E.3d 688, 691 (2015).

The court offered three explanations to support its holding that the Second Amendment does not extend to stun guns. First, the court explained that stun guns are not protected because they “were not in common use at the time of the Second Amendment’s enactment.”

Id., at 781, 26 N.E.3d, at 693. This is inconsistent with Heller ‘s clear statement that the Second Amendment “extends … to … arms … that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” 554 U.S., at 582, 128 S.Ct. 2783.

The court next asked whether stun guns are “dangerous per se at common law and unusual,” 470 Mass., at 781, 26 N.E.3d, at 694, in an attempt to apply one “important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms,” Heller, 554 U.S., at 627, 128 S.Ct. 2783 ; see ibid. (referring to “the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons’ “). In so doing, the court concluded that stun guns are “unusual” because they are “a thoroughly modern invention.” 470 Mass., at 781, 26 N.E.3d, at 693–694. By equating “unusual” with “in common use at the time of the Second Amendment’s enactment,” the court’s second explanation is the same as the first; it is inconsistent with Heller for the same reason.

Finally, the court used “a contemporary lens” and found “nothing in the record to suggest that [stun guns] are readily adaptable to use in the military.” 470 Mass., at 781, 26 N.E.3d, at 694. But Heller rejected the proposition “that only those weapons useful in warfare are protected.” 554 U.S., at 624–625, 128 S.Ct. 2783.

For these three reasons, the explanation the Massachusetts court offered for upholding the law contradicts this Court’s precedent. Consequently, the petition for a writ of certiorari and the motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis are granted. The judgment of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

Thus, the hearing was granted. This is their conclusion.

The lower court’s ill treatment of Heller cannot stand. The reasoning of the Massachusetts court poses a grave threat to the fundamental right of self-defense. The Su preme Judicial Court suggested that Caetano could have simply gotten a firearm to defend herself. 470 Mass., at 783, 26 N. E. 3d, at 695. But the right to bear other weap ons is “no answer” to a ban on the possession of protected arms. Heller, 554 U. S., at 629. Moreover, a weapon is an effective means of self-defense only if one is prepared to use it, and it is presumptuous to tell Caetano she should have been ready to shoot the father of her two young children if she wanted to protect herself. Courts should not be in the business of demanding that citizens use more force for self-defense than they are comfortable wielding.

Countless people may have reservations about using deadly force, whether for moral, religious, or emotional reasons—or simply out of fear of killing the wrong person. See Brief for Arming Women Against Rape & Endanger ment as Amicus Curiae 4–5. “Self-defense,” however, “is a basic right.” McDonald, 561 U. S., at 767. I am not pre pared to say that a State may force an individual to choose between exercising that right and following her con science, at least where both can be accommodated by a weapon already in widespread use across the Nation.

A State’s most basic responsibility is to keep its people safe. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts was either unable or unwilling to do what was necessary to protect Jaime Caetano, so she was forced to protect herself. To make matters worse, the Commonwealth chose to deploy its prosecutorial resources to prosecute and convict her of a criminal offense for arming herself with a nonlethal weapon that may well have saved her life. The Supreme Judicial Court then affirmed her conviction on the flimsi est of grounds. This Court’s grudging per curiam now sends the case back to that same court. And the conse quences for Caetano may prove more tragic still, as her conviction likely bars her from ever bearing arms for self defense. See Pet. for Cert. 14.

If the fundamental right of self-defense does not protect Caetano, then the safety of all Americans is left to the mercy of state authorities who may be more concerned about disarming the people than about keeping them safe.

This was a Per Curiam judgment, with the citations above belonging to Alito, with Thomas concurring. Lyle Denniston writes that “The Second Amendment expands, but maybe not by much.” I disagree.

The criteria was clear. Stun guns are “in common use for lawful purposes.” Thus, they are protected by the second amendment as the supreme court found in Heller and McDonald. For a weapon to be disallowed, it must be dangerous and unusual (according to the decision). Alito found that stun guns were not unusual.

Neither are AR-15s for that matter. Yet the fourth circuit concluded that a ban on them didn’t violate second amendment rights. That case is currently before the supreme court, having been redistributed for conference nine times (Snope v Brown). The supreme court is apparently too cowardly to take this case up and declare once and for all that AR-15s are not dangerous and unusual.

[Here I understand that other things might be going on. Thomas and Alito might know that they don’t have the support of the other justices, and don’t want bad precedent to be established. Even the supposed “libertarian” justice Gorsuch was heard suggesting in oral arguments on the bump stock ban case that congress ought to make them illegal.]

How ironic is it that the court system is allowing an inferior court to completely ignore its ruling in Caetano (or at least, the inferior court judge doesn’t care what Caetano says, and that judge certainly knew about the precedent), and that the court is allowing the fourth circuit to contravene its rulings in Heller, McDonald and Bruen by declaring an AR-15 ban constitutional, while striking out at the executive for suggesting that the court system needs reform?

What’s not surprising is that the executive might need to ignore the courts. What’s ironic is that not even the courts pay attention to the courts. They can’t even get their own house in order. Openly flouting supreme court precedent by the inferior courts is about as disorderly and vulgar as one can imagine.

Roberts has no right to criticize the executive until he cleans house. It should have been embarrassing to have issued those statements.